Object materials

[Anonymous]

When adding windows, doors, stairs etc from the "Design Tools" panel, they get the color of the layer. The big problem is that they all seem to render in layer color, red. Windows and all, which is totally useless. I'm new to ACad Architecture but found out about styles, material browser and the "display components" those objects consist of, under the display tab, but in there I only have glass and "Standard" and nothing more (please see the attached screenshot). How on earth do I add more materials in this list? Would be super to use some of the materials from the material browser....

I found out this program is terrible in UI and contains zillions of settings criss-crossed everywhere, but there MUST be a way, please help, I've been searching for this several days now. Please, step by step..

[David_W_Koch]

If you are using the out-of-the-box template files, there will not be many Material Definitions in your file - most likely just the ones attached to whatever object styles you have brought into the file.  Most likely, your localized content includes a source file with a number of Material Definitions for various building components that can serve as a starting point for building your own library.

For the United States imperial content, the default location for this file is C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\ACA 20xx\enu\Styles\Imperial\Material Definitions (Imperial).dwg, where 20xx is the "year" in the name of the version you are using.  It is possible to specify another location for the content files at the time of installation, or to move the files after the fact.  From your image, it does not appear you are located in the United States, so the location and file name will likely vary.

[Anonymous]

Okay, that file had a lot of materials in that same component dropdown. So how do I connect my drawings to that material list? Do I make an XRef of that material definition file? I'm going for the global settings.

[David_W_Koch · Accepted solution]

You can use the Style Manager (on the Manage ribbon tab, on the Style & Display panel, select the Style Manager tool) to copy the desired Material Definitions from the source file to the target file where you want to use them.  You can open files not open in AutoCAD Architecture in the Style Manager, if necessary.

In the left pane (tree view), expand the node for the source drawing file, and then expand the Multi-Purpose Objects node below that.  Select the Material Definitions node, and the right pane will display a list of the available Material Definitions.  Select those you want in the right pane.  You can use SHIFT-select to select a group of contiguous definitions or CTRL+select to select multiple individual definitions.  When you are done selecting, left-click and hold on one of the selected items and then drag them to the left pane, onto the target drawing name and release the left mouse button to copy them.  You can expand the target drawing (if not already expanded) and then expand the Multi-Purpose Objects node and select the Material Definitions node to verify that the definitions were copied.

[David_W_Koch]

This Screencast shows the process described in the previous post.

[Anonymous]

Thanks! That worked just fine!